Today I got my hands on a Hauppauge MediaMVP I bought from ebay. It's a tiny little box, about the size of my hub. It has a powerpc processor, runs linux, and plays mpeg files to a scart adapter. A 50 quid silent linux box perfect for media duties :)

Since it runs linux, you can ditch the windows only server side software it comes with, feed it a new boot image, and away you go. Armed with mvpmc, you can get it to play files off nfs shares, be a mythtv front end, loads of stuff :)

The only downside is that it doesn't have wireless, so I've had to buy another wireless access point to get ethernet downstairs. Once that has arrived, I can really play. For now, I can telnet in and prod...